The Briar Patch: Selected Poems & Translations

by J. Kates

Poetry. Translation. Hobblebush Books is delighted to announce Volume Five of its Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series, THE BRIAR PATCH, a collection of poems and literary translations by J. Kates. Along with the witty playfulness of the poems in this volume, there is an urgent exploration of contemporary human relationships. With erudition and compassion, Kates carries on his own version of Frost's "lover's quarrel with the world.""The turns of phrase, the rhymes, the often formal constructs and the sly wit...subtle undercurrents in work that is ambitious and daring in its emotional range and variety of subjects."--Marie Harris

112 pages, Paperback

First published September 15, 2012

Reviews

[Ken]

I had the pleasure of meeting J. Kates at my first poetry reading, where he served ably as reader #2. We exchanged books and, reading The Briar Patch, I feel as though I got to know Kates better. Jim is a New Hampshire poet and, as one might expect, harvests topics from the land around him. But he also explores a wide range of other topics, from the seasons to classic Greeks to Monet paintings to the Buddha to foreigners and exiles to politics to other cultures and history.

The book is divided into four sections, "How It Was," "Now and Then," "Desires," and "Harvest of the Fields." The last section allows Kates to share one of his passions, translating. It includes a wide range of authors, new and old: Gaius Valerius Catullus, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, Richard Plantagenet Coeur de Lion, Olivier de Magney, Gérard de Nerval, Jacques Prévert, René Daumal, Evgeny Saburov, Alexey Shelvakh, Sergey Magid, Aleksandra Sozonova, Nikolai Baitov, and Arsen Mirzaev. There are helpful biographic capsules on each translated poet at the end.

Here is a poem, simple but true, from the "How It Was" section:

Underwater

Underwater, under cold water
I pull and stroke, holding tight
to my chest the warm air,
letting it out in useless bubbles
by the count of kicks, farther
and farther from the shore.
Even here, there is above and below
darkening as I make for the center
of the wide lake, while overhead
a small circle of everyday
swims with me, always the same blue
and always ready to save my life.


And here Kates shows his facility with rhyming, a place I haven't gone yet (and may never, for all I know):

Stone Rubbing: A Local Graveyard

These black, faithful slaves who stand
through all weathers by their forgetful masters
at the open door, winged and grinning
and utterly submissive to my cold hand

will not leave off their warnings, prayers,
remembrances, even when I shroud them
and lift their souls into my own book.
Whatever I take, I leave what is most theirs.

I have been their gardener, their tender,
for my own end a servant to these servants
who care as little as their masters do
for anything less than apocalyptic splendor.

Who carved the slate felt for the dead

perhaps, and those who set the stone,
far more than my pathetic fallacies
can do, which take the cold death's head

and touch it every way but as my own.

The Briar Patch is part of The Hobblebush Granite State Poetry Series (Hobblebush being a small press that features New Hampshire poets in particular).

[Amy]

Kates is very adept with formal verse; his end rhymes are tight. Interesting volume including original poems by the author and a section of his translations of Roman, French, and Russian poets (Kates is a former president of the American Literary Translators Association). Favorite poems are:

Six-Day Wonder
Close Encounter
Advent
Now and Then
The Last Great Poet of Sumer
After Ever
Riding the Reservoir
I Used to Sing
Horace Ode 1:4

[Jillian · Rating 4 out of 5]

Totally random book I picked up off my shelves that helped me cheat a little in my reading challenge because it was such a short read and I wanted to get ahead. But I pushed myself to read every single poem in the book and I'm glad I did. I found many that I liked and that I could relate to. My most favorite was probably "After Ever," what happened to Snow White's "happily ever after." I also enjoyed the translations and their beautiful, complicated verse.

If you love poetry and want a book with just straight up verse, I highly recommend this one.